I am at a total loss for writing essays. It has been 20+ years since I have been in school and I need direction where to start.

Question

blurbendy · Answer

What kind of essay?

anonymous · Answer

Not really sure how to answer. It has been 20+ years since I have written one. Somewhere around 1991 or so. Simple essay for an anthropology article.

e.mccormick · Answer

A review? An argument? http://www.time4writing.com/writing-resources/types-of-essays/

anonymous · Answer

I have to write a review of a NG article for Anthro. 101.

jagatuba · Answer

For almost any essay whether it be a review or persuasive paper, you can use the 5 paragraph model. The five paragraph model follows the following basic outline:

I. Introduction paragraph
II. First Body paragraph
III. Second Body paragraph
IV. Fourth Body paragraph
V. Conclusion paragraph

where your Body paragraphs make the points you wish to convey. If you need this broken down further let me know.

e.mccormick · Answer

This covers the form pretty well: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/685/02/ Have you found your article yet? If not, do you have access to a database to use to find one, or do you need to use a public one from ERIC? http://eric.ed.gov/ By going to ERIC, searching for Anthropology, telling it to limit to full text and peer reviews, and then finally selecting Journal Articles as a final limit, I got this list: http://eric.ed.gov/?q=anthropology&pr=on&ft=on&ff1=pubJournal+Articles For a review of a journal paper, that is one way to find one to work with.

anonymous · Answer

The article I chose was from the September 1928 National Geographic. Four Faces of Siva: The Mystery of Angkor.

e.mccormick · Answer

OK. So find the focus of that article.  Then choose how you are going to review it.  Are you going to look at how they wrote it?  If it is an English class, that might be good.  Or, is this a review of the content, as in how accurate it is?  

In that second case, you need to find some other work that supports the conclusion of the article and some that is against it.  This will let you do a review in comparison to the standard literature.